The man pictured at left, is John Lee Clary. Yesterday, according to the online magazine Charisma, this former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan was ordained into the ministry of the Church of God in Christ.
The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) will be having their annual convocation in St Louis next year instead of Memphis, so they may be more in the news next year. They call themselves the 4th largest Protestant denomination, and they are predominantly (almost exclusively?) an organization of African American churches.
Rev. Clary will serve under a San Diego COGIC bishop and his primary work will be in repairing race relations.
I am struck by how different some of the core religious beliefs are between say– COGIC and the Unitarians, but we both want the same thing when it comes to race relations. Except that the COGIC folk are likely to be more successful at it than we are, if only for the fact that they number 6 million, and Unitarians number about 250,000.
¡uʍop ǝpısdn pןɹoʍ ʎɯ suɹnʇ sıɥʇ ǝʞıן sʍǝu
When Clary, et al talk about the situations with schools and prisons and minorities, I am right with him. And I am a pragmatist– if it works– let’s consider it.
I am reminded of flipping through the channels late one evening years ago, and a guy– maybe a preacher– was talking about the ills of the world, from AIDS to teen pregnancy, from environmental racism to the prison population, and all along I was thinking– this guy really has it. He knows what’s going on. I wonder what his prescription will be?
And it turned out to be Charles Colson, of Watergate Seven fame. And he and I saw the same situation, the same set of facts, but because we started out from completely different theological orientations, we had very different ideas about what to do about the agreed on problems.
White Power Watch 